George Pitcher is an Anglican priest who serves his ministry at St Bride's, Fleet Street, in London – the "journalists' church".

The simple future for women priests

We run a story today about St Mary the Virgin church in Enville, West Midlands, that has declared that it won't appoint a female priest as its new vicar. This sanction is actually quietly quite common in the Church of England. It's known as Resolution B (please donâ€™t ask about Resolutions A and C right now) and runs that the parochial church council (PCC) need "not accept a woman as the incumbent or priest-in-charge of the benefice or as team vicar for the benefice."

But the legal process is now underway to enable women to be bishops. The latest proposals for those who can't "in conscience" accept women bishops will put in place male "complementary bishops" who will provide Episcopal oversight to men-only parishes.

So the situation we're headed towards is one in which, plausibly, a woman diocesan bishop will appoint a male bishop to serve a parish that won't have a woman as its vicar. When that parish appoints its male vicar, he will be licensed by the woman diocesan bishop. So the PCC will be refusing to have a female vicar, but will have a man who is licensed by a bishop whose episcopacy it does not recognise as valid. In one sense, its own male vicar may be considered invalid, because his incumbency will be licensed by a bishop who isnâ€™t recognised by his own PCC; indeed, his own priesthood could be considered invalid if he was ordained by a woman bishop. Meanwhile, a woman bishop will actually have oversight over a parish that doesn't recognise the validity of that oversight, even though she licenses the man that they insisted on having as their vicar.